Recently, besides a conventional mechanical meter, an image display device using a liquid crystal panel or the like, is employed as a display device for a vehicular meter panel. The image display device has an advantage of fully controlling a setting of a display design and a layout.
In addition to the conventional mechanical meter, this image display device displays a screen of an in-vehicle navigation device. Besides, a route guidance device, which switches two modes (between a stop mode and a drive mode) according to a speed of a vehicle, has been proposed (JP11-051686A). In the stop mode, information required when the vehicle stops is displayed on a small screen of a liquid crystal display (LCD) display device. In the drive mode, information required when the vehicle is traveling is displayed on a large screen of the LCD display device. On the other hand, a map, the vehicle's own location, and a navigation guidance image including a guidepath while guiding a driver, are displayed on the small screen in the drive mode.
In a map display device in JP11-051686A, the navigation guidance image is displayed on a meter display. However, the map display device does not operate in coordination with a meter ECU that controls the meter display. Thus, the LCD display device of the meter display is not utilized effectively. Moreover, since the images are switched according to the speed of the vehicle, information that a user demands may not be displayed.
Furthermore, the user normally remembers ‘which information is displayed on which area of a display screen’. Consequently, when the user wants to know the speed of the vehicle, for example, he/she tends to ‘look at an area of the display screen, on which a speedometer is displayed’ instead of ‘looking for the speedometer’. Hence, switching the screen displays according to the speed of the vehicle may not allow the user to readily obtain required information, because it may take him/her a long time to ‘look for the speedometer’.